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AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

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Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#92
post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

How is this a social problem? Lawyers are expensive, because education takes time, motivation and competence. So it's an economical problem, something the state can't easily solve. Technology can make an impact here and sidestep or even ignore those problems.

There are multiple facets to this question depending on the type of law you are talking about.

Criminal, Civil, Contract, Torts, Family, etc.

In many areas of law I would agree with your statement, however with criminal law I have always felt that many governments have been in the habit of criminalizing poverty in many ways. Personally I think it should be mandated that at a minimum for every $1 given to a prosecutor's office to prosecute criminal cases, $0.50 should be given to public defenders (ideally $1 for $1 but I would take $0.50) currently is more like $0.10.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#93

No it won't since it's illegal. "At no time at any location within the courthouse may any electronic device be used to make a photograph or recording in any fashion, whether audio, video or otherwise." https://www.lawd.uscourts.gov/possession-and-use-electronic-...

I am fairly sure I saw live, in-courtroom coverage of both the Rittenhouse (as a prominent criminal case) as well as the Depp/Heart (a prominent civil) case.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#94
post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

How is this a social problem? Lawyers are expensive, because education takes time, motivation and competence. So it's an economical problem, something the state can't easily solve. Technology can make an impact here and sidestep or even ignore those problems.

Can it be a socio-economic problem? Do universities that these lawyers study at really need to be as expensive as they are?

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#95
post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

It could also make things much worse, due to Jevon's paradox. The way rich societies throw away tons of food because it isn't scarce, or how modern software is slower than ever because hardware is too cheap. If half-baked AI's lower *some* of the costs of law practice, we might end up wasting more resources than ever before fighting against the proliferating volume of it.

See, the sword cuts both ways. Prosecutors' office would run more efficiently, would pursue much larger caseloads (lower priority ones) with fewer employees and less time. Civil lawsuits could become much cheaper to file; trolling could expand from niches (like patent law) to much broader, more socially-impactful forms of warfare. The financial risk/reward equation is what deters this, and lowering the costs means eliminating the deterrence. And imagine regulatory compliance costs, when regulators feel emboldened to design regimes so elaborate they themselves don't understand them, because they have AI assistants capable of parsing them.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#96
post #65
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normative statements. You should be asking what are the incentives. > like the more straightforward tech solution is to improve traffic cameras/monitors such that tickets are given out more appropriately This is not straightforward from a bureaucratic sense. There is no strong incentive (that I can identify - humanitarian ideals do not count) to improve the functionality here to make traffic tickets and their resolut…

The threat of getting fired for incompetence is a perfectly good incentive.

The people with the power to fire them don't care. So your threat is empty.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#97
post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

Tech has solved[0] lots of social issues: - access to general knowledge: Wikipedia - safe transport for women at night: Find My Friends / Uber+Lyft - access to government data: opendata initiatives, a plethora of cadastral map services I'm going to say the obvious thing everyone is thinking. Everyone who has ever said "this is the core issue: you're trying to solve a social issue with technology" has never solved a s…

>- safe transport for women at night

This was also solved using non-tech and hundreds of years ago. It's called a firearm.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#98

Once this tech gets good, and everyone has access to a high-powered legal team for pennies, I am a little concerned that anyone will be able to DDoS the legal system. It's already possible for giant corporations to bury smaller actors in paperwork. They can and do crush people with this. What happens when everyone has this ability?

We revisit the legal system itself and hopefully replace it with something better?

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#100
post #15
post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

I disagree. Technology is the perfect solution for problems like these. So many societal issues today arise because systems developed centuries ago cannot keep up with a population that has grown exponentially since then. Tech's core feature is being able to scale. There will be more and more systemic reliance on automation and AI as time goes on, since that's the only sensible way out.

> because systems developed centuries ago cannot keep up with a population

This is _caused_ by technology, you usually don't solve a problem by adding more of its cause

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